Now is the time for the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government to reach out to each other and show the advocates of hatred and violence that more can be gained by each of them through peaceful negotiations with one another than through any other means.

In the aftermath of the most recent conflict between Israel and the Islamists in
Gaza, the natural question one must ask is have the chances for peace between
Israel and the Palestinians, or at least a truce for 99 years, been enhanced at
all by the events.

In the war, Israel demonstrated its overwhelming
superiority in the skies, its remarkable ability to successfully neutralize
incoming rockets aimed at population centers, its stunning intelligence about
the location of Hamas command and control structures and personnel, the
steadfastness of the home front as well as the state’s ability to restrain its
destruction of Gaza so that far fewer non-combatants would be harmed (although
still far too many) than was the case during Operation Cast Lead. It also proved
its ability to marshal international support for what most of the world saw as a
justified response to continued unprovoked attacks on its population by those
committed to its destruction.

For its part, however, the Islamists in
Gaza also perceive the conflict as showing their own remarkable abilities,
including a capacity to remain unbowed and unbroken under the Israeli onslaught,
an ability to continue firing rockets and missiles despite Israel’s unending
counterattacks, and finally the dramatic show of support for its view of Israel
as the aggressor from regimes in the Arab world, most prominently Egypt and its
new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi – support that included visits from Arab
leaders to Gaza in the midst of the war.

All this proved to them that the
tide has shifted, and the days when Arab opponents of Israel ran out of their
shoes and left their arms behind while they tried to escape the Israelis were
over. As the Hezbollah Islamists in Lebanon had shown, so too their Gaza
counterparts did now: Islam is the answer to Israel, if not to the entire world.
Those who fight under the banner of Islam, who remain true to their beliefs, and
are willing even to be martyred for their cause can never lose in the struggle
against the infidels who have dared to invade Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam.
Their steadfastness, they believe, will wear down the enemy and lead to his
ultimate defeat.

Given these two contrary visions of what lessons of the
latest war in Gaza teaches, how likely is it this war will lead to a prolonged
cessation of violence? For an answer, I look to the children and what they have
learned. While no comprehensive survey of this is yet available, two examples
stand out as perhaps symptomatic.

As reported in The New York Times on
November 18, “from the time he was a boy, Ali al-Manama dreamed of joining the
Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Hamas movement.
His commitment intensified when his father, a Qassam fighter, was killed by an
Israeli drone in 2001 as he fired mortar shells over the border. Ali joined up
at 15, relatives said, and by 23 had risen to be a commander in this
neighborhood in the midsection of this coastal Palestinian territory. On Friday,
at the funeral of a fellow fighter, Mr. Manama leaned over the body and said,
‘I’ll join you soon, God willing.’”

The other story comes from a radio report on
the BBC in which a Gaza teacher describes the “therapy” provided for young
Palestinian children traumatized by the eight days of bombing and fire rained
upon them by Israel. To allow them to express their feelings, the little
children were taken to a public square and lined up. Some were dressed in the
green uniform of Hamas fighters and were “armed” with toy machine guns that they
were encouraged to shoot in the air at Israelis.

Then an Israeli flag was
placed on the ground in front of them and set ablaze while all the youngsters
stamped on it and screamed epithets of hatred toward Israel and Israelis, with
the encouragement of their teachers, as passersby in the square watched. This,
she said, allowed them to give voice to their feelings so that they would not
remain bottled up inside.

This stands in sharp contrast to the children
in the Hof Ashkelon region who, according to a report in The Jerusalem Post,
were “welcomed by a clown and a man dressed as a panda bear who hugged them and
danced with them as they entered the gate, in order to ‘lighten up the
atmosphere.’” In these episodes, we can see the future. For the children of Gaza
it is one in which hatred of the Israeli supersedes all else. For the children
of Israel, it is a need to be taught again to smile, however briefly, in the
face of trauma.

As long as the dream of a Palestinian boy is to join a
brigade whose only goal is to lob bombs and rockets at Israelis and to die as
his father did doing the same thing, or Palestinian youngsters heal themselves
by pretending to shoot Israelis and expressing loathing for them, there is
neither hope for peace nor likelihood of a decent future for the Palestinian
people.

Those who encourage the Palestinians to see the source of their
victimization in Israel are only paving the road to this dead end. The true
enemy of the Palestinians is the hatred of Israel that they and others nurture
and encourage.

For those who long for another, more hopeful prospect, a
turn toward those Palestinians who have agreed to give up violence and recognize
the idea of two states for two people is the only reasonable option.

Now
is the time for the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government to reach
out to each other and show the advocates of hatred and violence that more can be
gained by each of them through peaceful negotiations with one another than
through any other means. An olive branch from the Netanyahu government and from
the PA – not dependence on Egyptian Islamist negotiators or UN bureaucrats – is
the best way to silence the hatred from Gaza and bring an end to the violence
that poisons the future.

Anything less is tragic.

The writer is a
Distinguished Professor of Sociology Queens College CUNY Holder of the Harold M.
Proshansky Chair of Jewish Studies, The Graduate Center.